33. Daisy
33
DAISY
“ I failed,” I cried miserably. “He found out. He was so disgusted.”
Reese rubbed my shoulders and handed me more tissues as we sat huddled behind the coffee cart counter.
“Now he’s blowing up the contract.” I hiccupped, hands shaking. “It’s not fair for him to act like that. You should have seen how he looked at me, like I was some sort of freak, like I was trying to scam him or trick him or something.”
I blew my nose.
“He’s going to go tell Aurora, and they’re going to laugh at me. He and that whole in-group are going to talk shit about me at the high school reunion this weekend.”
“Well, we’re going,” Reese declared, “and if he says shit, I’m going nuclear on him.” She rubbed my back. “It’s his fault you’re a virgin in the first place. You’re the victim here.”
“I know,” I sobbed.
“Look,” Reese said, “there’s not that many people in the office. No one’s coming for coffee. Let’s close early. You can’t make coffee when you’re sad. Then we’re going out. We’re going to find the love of your life at happy hour. There is for sure some guy there who would totally want to bang you.”
“You girls serve alcohol?”
“Gran!”
I hugged Granny Madge.
“Reese texted me, said we were having girls’ night. Woo!” Gran whipped her shirt up. “I’m all ready to go.”
One guy who was coming for a late-afternoon coffee caught a full-frontal view and immediately about-faced back to the elevator.
“Gran, this is a conservative building.”
“Repressed men are the kinkiest!” She winked.
The tablet pinged with a digital order.
“Oh no,” I said.
“Don’t take it to him,” Reese warned. “He doesn’t deserve it.”
“Betty ordered it,” I hissed, slamming the espresso pan into the machine. “I don’t want him to scream at her if we tell her we can’t deliver it.”
I felt sick, both from all the coffee and the fact that I hadn’t been able to sleep last night because of how upset I was.
“I’m coming with you,” Reese declared when I finally sealed the plastic top on Aaron’s coffee. She and Gran trooped behind me to the elevator.
“Hey, girl!” Granny Madge crowed when she saw Betty.
“Gran, shh!”
But it was too late. Aaron, on the other side of the glass wall separating him from the riffraff at Van de Berg Insurance, raised his head.
His eyes narrowed at the sight of me.
“…we’re going to hit happy hour at Vibe, then we need to go to Camelli’s. Reese says Daisy is having a rough time and needs some fried squid,” my grandmother chattered to Betty.
Aaron’s door slammed open.
“Get the fuck out.”
“Oh,” Granny Madge said, “so that’s the rough time.”
I did not need a whole audience for this.
Coffee clenched in my hand, I marched to his door, which I kicked closed behind me while Reese, Betty, and Granny Madge gawked.
“You are such a toddler,” I snapped, “and toddlers don’t get coffee strong enough to kill a space Marine.” I reached out to drop the cup in his trash can.
Aaron grabbed me in a grappling hold, bruising my hip against his desk as he clamped his large hand on my arm like a vise.
“I can’t say I’m surprised by the immaturity,” he said, twisting my arm so my fingers would release the cup. “Your whole shtick makes sense now.” He took a swig of the coffee. “You’re mentally a teenager. You live in a fantasy world, with your books and your childhood bedroom and your cat—a little girl playing pretend.”
“God, you are so awful!” I screamed at him. “And I’m not going to feel bad tonight when I actually do find a man and lose my virginity.”
Rather than getting angry, Aaron just laughed.
“Stop acting like you don’t care.” I clenched my fists.
If I were actually an experienced sexual goddess like Aurora, I’d know some secret trick to turn Aaron on, to make him jealous and possessive and desire me.
Instead, I could only stand there and name-call like a kid.
“You’re the one who’s a scaredy cat.”
“ Scaredy cat ? Really, Coleman?” He raised an eyebrow as he sipped that disgusting coffee.
I floundered on.
“You’re chicken because you’re afraid you’re going to catch cooties or something from a virgin.”
He leaned against his desk and crossed his arms.
Dismissive.
God, I hated the way he made me feel.
“Coleman.” He barked out a cold laugh. “I’ve seen you flirt, and I don’t have anything to worry about.”
He set the coffee on the desk then he was stalking me. I scuttled backward until my back thumped against the glass wall.
“I’d threaten you,” he said, the deep baritone derisive, “but I know you’ll cop out. You’d rather have your fairy-tale men than a real cock.”
“Fuck you. I hate you.”
“Good.”
Granny Madge stuck a pink curly straw in my wineglass.
“Aren’t you Aaron’s ride or die?” I asked Betty after laying the whole humiliating experience out on the table. “Why are you helping me?”
“There’s a lot of money riding on this deal. I didn’t make it this far by putting rich people in the poor house. Make a rich person richer and take your cut.” She patted my hand.
“Van de Berg is fucked if Aaron can’t get it up. The paperwork’s going to be a nightmare. I’d have to cancel my Aruba vacation. If all Aaron needs is for you not to be a virgin, then we’ll make it happen. A good assistant greases the wheels. Besides, my pension is heavily invested in Van de Berg stock.”
She handed me a shot glass. “Drink up, girlfriend.”
“Do it for the fam,” Granny Madge urged.
Betty and Granny Madge knocked back the shots.
Reese rubbed my shoulders like I was getting ready for a cage match.
“Blond guy. Two o’clock. Blue shirt.”
“Ew, really?” Granny Madge made a face.
“We’re throwing her a softball. That guy is here to get laid. He’ll sleep with anything. Now, it won’t be pretty, but it will check a box.” Betty nodded.
I slowly stood up.
“Hoist the girls up.” Gran grabbed my shirt. “You got this, baby!”
My virginity-losing target was gathered with his friends at one of the outdoor dartboards installed in the bar’s courtyard.
“You want to go play something a little more interesting than darts?” I asked him in my best sex-kitten voice.
“Uh…” The guy recoiled. Up close, he was a little—actually, no, a lot younger than I had originally thought.
“I think you’re too old for me.” His voice cracked.
“I’m twenty-eight!” I shrieked.
“You’re twenty-nine!” Reese yelled. “Own it!”
“I’m not really looking for an older woman.” The kid reddened.
I scuttled back to the table.
“That’s okay!” Granny Madge assured me, foisting another drink on me when I slumped back down in my chair. “Try, try again.”
“I can’t. I’m not feeling it.” I sighed into my drink. “I’m sorry I’m a wet mop. I think I’m just going to go home and read.”
“You’re not going to lose your virginity in a book, sugar,” Betty said sagely.
“Don’t you get to be, like, a witch or something if you make it ’til thirty?”
“It’s age forty you become a wizard,” Reese corrected.
My head thunked on the table. “I don’t think I can last another decade.”
It was still light outside when I curled up in the library back at Aaron’s huge empty house.
I wished it was raining. I longed for a hot cup of tea, a warm fuzzy blanket, a candle burning, a plate of treats, and a good book.
It was hard to have a cozy fall evening when it was bright, sunny, and boiling hot outside.
Idly, I flipped through the copy of Jane Eyre I was trying to reread for my lecture class. While I normally loved the book, loved being transported into a world of secrets and castles and the push and pull of love, it was hard to get excited about poor Jane now that I had my own gothic shit show.
I just wanted to take her shopping and day drink.
She’d earned it.
Trailing my fingers along the ancient leather-bound books on the shelf, I selected one at random.
The tome was a history of the surrounding neighborhood, with detailed hand sketches and architectural drawings of the former mansions. Old maps told the story of a neighborhood that used to be a hotbed for smuggling during the American Revolution. I flipped the page to a drawing of an underground canal made of bricks.
The next page had a black-and-white photo of someone smuggling alcohol to a party in one of the rich houses during the Depression.
Now this was what I needed. Screw romance. Let’s have an adventure.
I ran upstairs and slipped on my Vans. When I grabbed a scrunchie out of my makeup bag, I saw the ancient, slightly rusty key from last week. Maybe it led to one of the smuggler’s caverns? If I found alcohol down there, that would for sure make up for this terrible week.
After making sure the servants weren’t looking, I nabbed one of the glass oil lamps. If it wasn’t so hot out, I’d take a cloak. I wasn’t going adventuring without some sort of aesthetic.
Dorain puttered around the backyard while I searched for a secret passage, a hole in the ground, a door in the wall, anything .
“This is lame,” I told the cat who’d found the last patch of direct sunlight in the yard and was settling down for a nap.
Had they filled in all the canals in the seventies?
An old wooden door on the side of the house led only to storage. Disappointed, I inspected the garden. Using my phone flashlight, I peered into a grate, but it just held a bird’s nest.
“Sorry, Mrs. Thrush.”
The bird chirped angrily.
“Dorian, leave that alone,” I warned the cat.
The horses greeted me when I snuck into the stables.
“I did bring some carrots for you,” I cooed at them.
I set the lamp down on a stone ledge to feed the horses. As they crunched the treat, I petted their velvety noses.
“I’ll miss you guys,” I whispered to them. “Your dad’s kicking me out because I fail at being a woman and an adventurer.”
With a sigh, I turned to retrieve the lamp.
The flame had blown out.
I closed my eyes, raised my arms, and felt the faintest of breezes.
“The curious incident of the dog in the nighttime!” Gleefully, I looked for some sort of lever or keyhole or secret doorway. “Found it!”
The stall of the big black gelding had a thin crack in one wall. The animal moved aside politely while I tapped the wall until I finally found a hollow.
Plaster crumbled as I used my keys to pry open the little hollow, which turned out to contain a keyhole.
The skeleton key fit perfectly.
As I slowly turned it, I prayed the rusted metal didn’t break.
The horse’s ears flicked when a lock clicked and, in the floor by the doorway, the stones sank.
“Oh my god, this is literally so cool!”
I snapped photos of the secret passage then lit my lamp.
“Into the brink!”
It was damp and dark inside the tunnel. I followed rushing water in a stone-lined channel, which cooled my skin.
When the channel forked, I took the right path. The light reflected off the ripples of the water and onto the stone ceiling. The sound of a small waterfall let me know I’d arrived… somewhere. I noticed an ornate metal grate and peeked through it to see a mosaicked pool, skylights above letting in the last of the evening summer sunlight onto a colorful mosaic-lined pool.
“A secret pool!” I snapped more photos. I didn’t have phone reception, though, and the images didn’t send when I tried to text them to Reese.
“I am coming back with some bolt cutters or something,” I hummed, “because I’m going swimming.”
Since this stream had dead-ended at the pool, I turned around to explore the left fork.
The channel widened the farther back into the dark I went. The tunnel must have held another spring or something.
“I wonder if there’s treasure.”
The canal cut to the left, and I almost followed it until the oil lamp cast a glow over a little arched stone footbridge.
No trolls ate me as I crossed over to some wide stone steps.
I held up the lamp as I stepped onto a landing of some sort. Trying to peer in the low light, I made out…
Was that a couch? And a bookcase? A marble statue ?
Was someone living down here? Had I stumbled into some sort of mole-person enclave?
The blanket on one of the couches wasn’t a threadbare sheet, though. It was an expensive, soft wool. On the coffee table lay a newspaper from several days ago.
The hair on the backs of my arms rose. I was suddenly very creeped out.
Yeah, I needed to get the hell out.
As I was making my way through the dark, I heard an ominous metal clang.
Panicking, I blew out the light and hid behind the nearest chair. I clapped my hand over my mouth as sconces along the wall flickered to life, illuminating the cavernous underground room and the metal spiral staircase at one end of it.
It was when I heard heavy male footsteps descend the wrought iron staircase that I realized I was fucked.